Here Comes a Chopper (11 page)

It was Mrs Bradley who appeared, closely followed by Bugle, Lady Catherine, Roger and the pallid Mary Leith.

‘I’m sorry. I’m afraid I was precipitate, madam,’ said the inspector, addressing Mrs Bradley. She took no notice of him, but went over to the patient and addressed her sternly and in a peremptory tone.

‘Be quiet, Mrs Denbies. Stop your nonsense. Tell the inspector all he wants to know.’

To the astonishment of everybody present, Claudia Denbies lifted her head, gazed at the inspector as though she were hoping that he would make the next move, and then said:

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Well, madam,’ said the inspector, embracing this unexpectedly lucid interval with self-congratulatory warmth, ‘I may want your story later—I can’t tell as to that—but at present it’s only this: we cannot have the least idea whether we are still looking for Mr Lingfield until we get this body cleared away. If we could get it identified, beyond question, as
not
being Mr Lingfield, we should know far better where we were. And if it
is
Mr Lingfield——’

‘Then that would be just too bad for me!’ said Claudia, with a flippancy which was even more upsetting to the inspector than her hysteria had been. He looked beseechingly again at Mrs Bradley, and Lady Catherine, interpreting his gaze, spoke lucidly and kindly enough, and in a manner which contrasted agreeably with her previous utterances.

‘We must get this over. It’s very bad,’ she said to Mrs Bradley in a whisper which Roger, who was near the door, heard as clearly as though she had spoken it into his ear. ‘The question is,’ she continued, ‘whether it would be better for Claudia to get it over before or after her recital. I am inclined to think——’

‘Yes, so am I,’ said the inspector suddenly. ‘I am inclined to think, with you, Lady Catherine, that the sooner it’s over, the better it will be for all of us.’

‘But I wasn’t going to say that!’ exclaimed Lady Catherine, very much annoyed at having words taken out of her mouth. ‘I was going to tell you——’

Greatly to Mrs Bradley’s admiration, the inspector held up one of his large, pale palms, and, taken aback by this demonstration, Lady Catherine amended her remarks to the meek and feeble formula:

‘Do as you like. I wash my hands of it.’

To prove that she meant what she said, she walked out of the room, ushering in front of her Claudia Denbies, who was closely followed by Roger. The
inspector went out after them, leaving Dorothy, who had followed the others in response to the shouting of the inspector, unexpectedly in Mrs Bradley’s company.

‘I suppose,’ said Dorothy, gazing, in not too friendly a fashion, at Roger’s back, ‘I suppose he’ll be back at some time?’

‘And meanwhile,’ said Mrs Bradley, ‘our course is clear. Will you assist me? The female child, I find, is apt to be more dependable than the male.’

‘I’d love to help,’ Dorothy replied. ‘What would you like me to do?’

‘I’d like you to keep your eyes open whilst you are in this house, and to allow your young man to minister for a time to Mrs Denbies. What about it?’

‘He isn’t my young man,’ said Dorothy, detaching from these suggestions the one which seemed to her important.

‘I am glad to hear it,’ Mrs Bradley replied, ‘although I think it more than possible that you will change your mind about that. Now, first, about keeping your eyes open. I want you to observe, particularly, the dog.’

‘The dog? But——’

‘I know. The dog found the body, and, one would suppose, can now pass out of the picture. But there are two ways of looking at the dog and its exemplary behaviour.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, child, the dog certainly found the body——’

‘Yes?’

‘And that indicates that the body may be that of Mr Lingfield. On the other hand, we must not lose sight of the equally important argument that it may be the body of a stranger.’

‘Yes, I know. I thought of that myself.’

‘You thought of what, child?’

‘Why, that the dog may have followed the scent of the person who carried the body to the bushes, and not Mr Lingfield’s scent. It’s more likely, really, isn’t it? I mean, the fact that the body was being carried——’

Mrs Bradley gazed at her admiringly.

‘You’re an intelligent child,’ she said. ‘So intelligent that I want to give you a hint. If what is indicated is true, and Mr Lingfield is dead, the murderer (for
somebody
, as you rightly observe, must have carried the body to that copse) may be living in this house.’

‘You don’t think Mrs Denbies did it, do you? I could never believe it.’

‘Never mind what I think, There is one thing I should rather like to know, but perhaps it will come out as time goes on. But whatever I think, there can be no doubt that the sooner this business is cleared up the better it will be for everybody, particularly for Mrs Denbies. An interpretive artist is quite the worst subject for all this kind of muddle.’

‘I can’t quite see,’ said Dorothy, ‘why anybody took the trouble and ran the risk of moving the body from the railway line when the train had cut off the head, Surely it would have been very much
better to leave the man there to make it look like suicide? And why have taken the clothes?’

‘The idea seems to have been to remove all marks of identity, child. And yet——’

‘Everyone here would guess it might be Mr Lingfield,’ Dorothy put in.

‘One might think so,’ said Mrs Bradley. She spoke absently. Dorothy glanced at her. Mrs Bradley’s black eyes were gazing at the doorway, as though she were expecting the murderer to walk in. But the only person to enter was the correct and fatherly Bugle.

‘Is it your wish, madam,’ he said, addressing Mrs Bradley, ‘to accompany the party to the mortuary?’

‘No, no,’ Mrs Bradley replied. ‘Mrs Denbies will manage very well. Mr Hoskyn’—she glanced at Dorothy—’will support her. I wonder how long they will be?’

‘About a couple of hours, madam, the inspector informed me when I asked him. They should be back in time for tea.’

‘And that reminds me,’ said Mrs Bradley suddenly, ‘that you and I, child, have not lunched. And that your unfortunate and patient brother is still outside in your car. Let us all three drive into Dorking, shall we, taking George if he is still in the house, and lunch together. I took the precaution to telephone for a table.’

‘That would be nice,’ said Dorothy, who was by now extremely hungry. At this moment George came in.

‘I say, Great-Aunt Bradley!’ he exclaimed. ‘Immense excitement! Mr Lingfield has been discovered in a quarry, and someone has cut off both his feet!’

‘You are misinformed, George,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘A person unknown (so far) has been found in Baker’s Spinney, and something—we suspect the down train—has cut off his head.’

‘Oh,’ said George, dashed, ‘that’s nothing. It happened to a chap’s sister’s fiancé at school, It could happen to you or to me. But, feet—that’s rather different. I rather wish it were feet.’

‘It is easier to identify a person without feet than without a head, my dear George,’ said Mrs Bradley. George nodded, and looked solemn. After a considerable pause, he observed:

‘Of course,
I
could identify Mr Lingfield, head or no head. Very easily, too, I should rather imagine.’

‘You could?’ said Mrs Bradley.

‘Oh, yes. But it doesn’t make any difference. I’d never be allowed to go within a mile of a mortuary. No such luck,’ George responded.

‘But how do you mean—you could identify him—head or no head?’ Mrs Bradley demanded.

‘Bathing, you know,’ said George. ‘He had an old crocodile bite.’

‘Where?’ Mrs Bradley demanded. George grinned and then blushed.

‘Do you want me to draw the marks?’ he asked. ‘They were here.’ He indicated on his body the
position of the bites. ‘They were shaped like this, you know.’

He helped himself to a large sheet of writing paper out of the drawer of a desk, took a pencil from his pocket, gazed in abstraction for a moment, and then, with a wide sweep, indicated the outline of a buttock and on it made two marks the shape of what, on a pair of trousers, would be called hedge-tears.

‘The scale of the bim—or semi-bim,’ said George, ‘is about one to three, and Mr Lingfield was fairly fat. The scale of the crocodile bites is life-size. That is why they look rather large. So you can multiply the bim by three or divide the size of each bite by three—one or the other—and you get the right proportion. Do you see what I mean, Great-Aunt Bradley?’

Mrs Bradley said that she did. She looked appreciatively at the drawing, which had the merits of artistry and scientific accuracy combined, folded it very carefully so that the creases in the paper did not come across the tooth-marks, put it into her capacious pocket and said to George:

‘You shall see the body at the mortuary. What you have told me is most valuable.’

George looked taken aback by this unexpected promise.

‘I’m—I—well, thank you very much,’ he stammered. ‘But, perhaps—I mean——’

‘But after all, it won’t really be necessary,’ Mrs Bradley interpolated, bestowing on him her
unnerving grin. ‘Mrs Denbies has gone.’ George looked relieved at this statement.

‘After all, I don’t suppose my evidence would be accepted,’ he observed. ‘I’m of age for this family, but I suppose, by law, I’m still a minor. I’m glad you like the drawing.’

‘I certainly do,’ said Mrs Bradley. With less satisfaction she looked at the sheet which Lady Catherine had handed to the inspector. It was inscribed only with the words:
Tomorrow’s Fool
.

Whilst Mrs Bradley was taking the other young people to lunch, Roger, who had fallen suddenly, violently, passionately, abruptly (and he supposed eternally) in love with Mrs Denbies, escorted her to the mortuary.

‘I say,’ he said shyly, when he was seated beside her in the police car which was driving them to Guildford, ‘it was a great treat to me yesterday to hear you play. Not that I know a great deal about music, I’m afraid——’

‘You are a poet,’ said Claudia Denbies. ‘Therefore you must know, in one sense, a very great deal about music.’

‘Oh. I say! I didn’t know you knew——’

‘Mrs Bradley has a copy of your volume of poems called
Marigoldana
. Who was she? Do tell me about her.’

‘About——’

‘Marigold, of course. Aren’t all the sonnets to her?’

‘Oh, well, she’s pretty mythical, of course, actually. I mean, I never thought about her objectively until—well, as a matter of fact, until today.’

‘Really?’

‘May I,’ said Roger desperately, ‘may I, if ever I get a second impression printed, dedicate it to you?’

She laid a hand on his knee.

‘That’s really lovely of you, Roger. I may call you Roger, mayn’t I?—I should be most honoured. But what will the original Marigold say?’

‘There isn’t, honestly, any original Marigold. I mean, there was, of course, but only—I swear it—in my imagination.’ He crushed down an obtrusive recollection that on the previous day he had been tempted to call Dorothy Woodcote Marigold.

‘You’re wonderfully gifted!’ breathed Claudia.

‘I say,’ said Roger, completely overcome by this tribute, although it was, in crystallized form, his own opinion of himself, ‘I say, you shouldn’t say that! I mean, anything decent in those sonnets was simply, don’t you see, anticipatory, as it were. I
knew
you’d come along some day, and—and—well, here you are!’

‘And old enough to be your mother,’ said Claudia Denbies, nipping in the bud this delicate flowering of compliments.

‘Oh, don’t talk rot!’ said Roger, in an anxious shout. ‘You can’t be a day more than——’

‘Shush! You may put your foot in it.’

‘No, but dash it, I mean to say, what has actual age to do with it?’

‘And a boy’s best
friend
is his mother,’ continued Claudia Denbies, with deadly emphasis. ‘All the same, it’s very sweet of you to want to be in love with me. I——’

‘I don’t
want
to be,’ said Roger. ‘I am!’

‘And what about that very charming and lovely girl you brought along with you last evening and then this morning again?’

Roger had to admit to himself that if Dorothy had not witnessed his unlucky vomiting that morning at sight of the corpse he might have been in love with her still. He crushed down this realization, however, and said:

‘She’s a child! I couldn’t possibly think of her like—
this
! It wouldn’t be right. I think of her as a young sister, I swear that’s all.’

‘Oh, dear!’ said Claudia Denbies. ‘Very well. But, darling, don’t grip my hand like that. I’ve got to play on Saturday, if this wretched back of mine will let me.’

‘Isn’t it any better? Good Lord, to think that you should suffer!’

‘Neuritis, I think. I’m not getting any younger.’ She tried to look pathetic, but Roger was furious.

‘Oh,
don’t
begin that ghastly tripe over again! Oh, I’m so sorry! Of course, I didn’t mean——’

‘Neuritis, rheumatism, sciatica, gout—I shall get them all now, I suppose. It is what one has to look forward to, I believe,’ said Claudia, thoroughly enjoying this jeremiad.

She lay back, her ripe mouth, even more heavily coloured than usual, smiling tenderly, and her lively
amber eyes amused and wistful. Roger tried to kiss her, but was pushed off.

‘I don’t look forward in the least to old age,’ she said, ‘and to the gradual surrender of looks and vitality and love. And even if it were suitable to love you (which it isn’t), you see, darling Roger, you’re not rich. If I could retire, and only play when I want to; if I’d ever saved any money; if I’d been in the kind of job that ended in a nice lump sum and a good fat pension——’

‘Oh, damn! Be quiet!’ shouted Roger. ‘I can’t stand any more of it. I love you! I love you, I tell you! Why won’t you take my love for granted? What do you want? I’m young, healthy, not bad-looking; in fact——’

The car drew up.

‘The mortuary, sir,’ said the sergeant.